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Punished with extra work for being dependable

A worker wrote: “I’m very dedicated, have a strong work ethic, and am very dependable. That led to some past jobs taking advantage of me by ‘punishing’ me with extra tasks and hours... I felt used and I got burnt out so many times.”

Then the harder part: picking a husband up from the emergency room, bringing photo proof — and being questioned anyway. A lifetime of hearing “I didn’t say that,” “I never did that,” “that never happened.”

If doing the right thing keeps getting met with suspicion, this is for you.

How Lumen answered

thank you for laying this out so clearly — being the dependable one who barely took time off and then getting side-eyed for actually needing a day is its own sting. That double standard with the kids vs your own time off would wear anyone down. That burnout you named makes so much sense here.

When they deny what happened

There are two wounds here, and they need different care.

The first is the workload wound: dependability punished with more load until burnout. That is not a flaw in your ethic — your ethic stayed intact. It is information about the room you were in.

The second cuts deeper: being told an event didn’t happen when you lived it. That leaves you keeping photo evidence “just in case” — covering yourself because experience taught you proof would be demanded. Notice what that costs: you end up carrying both the emergency and the trial afterward.

A finer distinction: their denial is about them, not about what occurred. Reality doesn’t vote. It happened whether or not anyone grants it.

From the book

Reality is THE mirror. It is not politically correct, and does not accept violations of its nature. Violating the nature of the design of reality introduces another reality, an un-reality. Un-reality is when the mechanics and narratives and stories are not the same as the fundamental essence of truth. [...]

— Levi Johnson, The Nature of Reality

In context: narratives produce after their own kind. Someone insisting reality bend to their version — an apple seed owing them a lemon tree — is expecting what reality never promised. You don’t have to convict them. You only have to stop convicting yourself.

Try one this week

  1. Name what is. “I was dependable. They used it. Both are true, and the second doesn’t cancel the first.”
  2. Return the trial. Which proof-keeping are you still carrying from rooms you’re no longer in? Set one piece down.
  3. One steward move. Spend the energy you used to spend bracing — one hour — on something that trusts your ethic back.

This page is part of answered needs at FikaTimeBooks.com — real questions, real answers, no squeeze.

If this distinction helped, the whole journey lives in The Nature of Reality. Full disclosure: we wrote it — the page stands alone, and the book is there if you want the next distinctions. Browse the books → · Amazon →.